


Dreams of Darkness and Light

by Karyra



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, I have a few more I wanna get to but they're a surprise!, Not Canon Compliant - Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, Treasure Planet (2002) References, and by references I mean we're getting that world I wanted from 3, power of waking, someday I'll play it but, written before Melody of Memory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:49:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28675488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karyra/pseuds/Karyra
Summary: Kairi's not sitting around dreaming for nothing.She's going to get that same power that made Sora disappear and find him with her own two hands. No more other's sacrifice for her sake, no more sitting around.Too bad Vanitas is also there.Still, she is going to get the power of Waking and find Sora with her own power. Even if that means dealing with the annoying obstacle of Vanitas... who seems to be lacking a keyblade?
Kudos: 6





	1. Prologue

Kairi had once heard one should not start a story with a dream.

This was in reference to how she was talking about how she dreamed about a boy who had brown hair and sky blue eyes and a laugh that could lift your spirits with ease. Sora had been erased from memory at that time, so she thought nothing too much of it. Until now, that is.

Sleep was such a strange thing.

Here in her dreams, she was little again. Sitting on the beach of the play island, with Riku and Sora racing each other as usual. This wasn’t supposed to be usual. For one, Kairi knew she was asleep. For two...

Kairi watched the two boys fight with their wooden swords. She wondered if the real Riku was all right, without Sora there to push him to be better. The sunset was beautiful, but all she could see were those last moments with Sora. “For your sake,” Sora said.

Kairi stood up, but it was her older self. Her keyblade wielder self. This time, she wasn’t going to sleep merely for the sake of being asleep or being sent away for safety.

“Seven sleeping worlds. Then I can find Sora.”

Riku and Sora’s test requirements were well known at this point, and if Sora could use the power of waking to save her and the others, then she could use it to find Sora. He paid a hefty price for it, but she could use it once without any severe consequences. Maybe.

But she’d pay it regardless.

One last look at the two playing on the wooden bridge, and she saw that she couldn’t see Sora’s face anymore. It was blurry, just a blurry mess of sunburned skin.

“Kairi?” Riku asked, stopping the battle to check on her. “What’s wrong?”

Sora spoke too, but the voice was far away, like they were talking to each other from across worlds, not a few feet.

Kairi shook her head and smiled, “nothing. I’m just going on a journey for a while.”

“Are you going to the doctor again? All the adults are worried that you just appeared from nowhere. They wanna make sure you’re okay.” Riku was always concerned like that.

“... Yeah.” Kairi lied. “This is a special doctor though. They’re going to make sure that I can start sword fighting with you guys!”

“I’ve never heard of a sword fighting doctor before...” Riku said, uneasy.

“Don’t sound so concerned about your ‘training’ Riku. Worried I’ll be better than you?” Kairi winked and kept up her playful smile.

“I’m training to protect you!” Riku said, but this wasn’t young Riku anymore. It was an older Riku. The Master.

Kairi kept up her smile, but felt her heart drop at the memory. “I won’t be protected anymore. I want to stand on my own two feet with you by my side. I’ll be back, though. I promise.”

With that, Kairi ran into the ocean without a second thought. The keyhole appeared on cue, and she instinctively summoned her keyblade to unlock it.

She could hear Riku running to grab her, but by the time his hand reached her, she was gone. Kairi was surprised that it felt like the keyhole had pulled her down into this tunnel.

Orbs of munny and health whizzed by her head, and Kairi watched them idly. It only took to feel a sign advertising a tavern of all things brushing her hair to feel alarmed that she was now falling at high speed. She struggled to flip over, and once she did, she had to use her keyblade to split another sign in half, and it sparked as it passed her by.

But the sight of a moon below her... filled with buildings to the brim, so that they practically were built on top of each other. Ships, flying ships with glittery sails went to and fro. These weren’t like the Gummi ship, but rather like the raft in her imagination. A grand ship with a crew of pirates setting out to see the world.

They could never have imagined this.

The tunnel quickly came to an end and Kairi had seconds to figure out how to land gracefully without destroying half a city block with her impact. She grabbed flying signs, gutters, and anything that she could reach. However, she just caused herself to fall ungracefully into a garbage can.

A gutter had it’s revenge by landing on her head, and it was all Kairi could do to keep from calling out a swear. She wasn’t feeling particularly Princess of Light-like when it came to pain and frustration.

“Well,” she said. “I’m here.”


	2. Blueberries, Hardtack, and Oranges

So her first foray into diving into a new world wasn’t great. Still better than expected, and she didn’t seem to have any drowsiness problems... yet. Riku mentioned falling asleep randomly in battle. A lot.

She extracted herself from the now-smashed trash can, pulled a potion out of her pocket, and started to walk towards... the docks. Yeah, that would be a good start for trying to find a keyhole. Probably.

She had to admit that she’d never just been dropped on a world before, so the whole situation was new to her. Still, she had a goal, and it wasn’t like this was the only way to find Sora, just the most reliable. 

The city was just as packed and full of life as her first glimpse of it had been. Perhaps more so, because now she could see the ships overhead in more detail and they were huge. Galleons, Kairi recalled. However, as she stared up into the sky, she nearly tripped over what she thought was a cat, only to have it turn to her and angrily tell her to watch where she was going.

The people were a mix of humans, aliens, and robots. And all of them came in so many shapes and forms. No two of anything looked the same. She’d seen Mickey, but there were stone faced aliens and cat-like aliens, and humans with limbs made of strange gears and wires.

Kairi wandered the docks aimlessly, hoping that something would happen that could lead her to the keyhole, but...

“Nothing.” Kairi said to herself, having collapsed on a bench to watch the docks. “Not even one heartless. Just a tiny one? Please?”

Her prayers were answered by the telltale skritch-skritch sound of claws on stone. Kairi was already on her tired feet to follow the source of the noise. There was an alley formed out of buildings that had been a great many things over the years, but the alley was largely ignored for the look of plain stone and more basic garbage cans like the one she had fallen into.

Instead of a shadow being there when she rounded the corner, instead she ran into a blue... zig-zag creature. It was trapped by the alley, having reached a dead end. It scratched at the walls, chittered in it’s strange alien language and jumped up to try and somehow leap over the large building in it’s way.

The more Kairi looked at it, the more she realized this was not a Heartless. She had gotten excited over nothing. Merlin had trained her to recognize a lot of monsters, and there were even strange ones she’d heard Terra and Aqua talk about, but this was probably just some alien like the cat alien she had nearly stepped on not that long ago.

“Ugh,” Kairi groaned in defeat. She sat down in the dirty alley, too tired to move from that spot. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know where the sleeping Keyhole is, would you?”

The thing chittered in response. It seemed to be confused about her just talking to it. It cautiously moved closer to Kairi, and if she moved even a little it ran back to the corner. Eventually, it came close enough to touch her hand in what she interpreted as sympathy.

“You probably don’t even know what a keyhole is, let alone a sleeping keyhole.” Kairi laid down in the alley, letting herself stare up at the sky and the glimpses of flying ships passing overhead.

The mystery creature crawled slowly up onto her stomach, where it stared up at the sky with her. When it looked back down, it thought deeply about something important, then moved off Kairi’s stomach to grab her hand and try to pull her upright.

Kairi, lacking any sort of leads, decided to stand up and follow the weird creature. It moved through the ground from time to time, and she wasn’t sure if this was a shadow or not anymore. It moved like one, albeit more twitchy, but it really wasn’t interested in attacking her like a shadow would.

They reached the docks again, and Kairi had to weave her way between people, aliens, and robots which took time, while her odd companion could just dart under the ground, move quickly, then stare back at her like it was annoyed by her being slow. It wasn’t her fault if she had to go against the flow of traffic because this stupid monster thing could just ignore all of that with ease. They soon arrived at a ship that was preparing to set sail.

Finally, she caught a glimpse of spiky hair and her heart rose into her throat. It was Sora! They no longer had to search or sleep or pray to find him, he was right in front of her.

Without hesitation, Kairi reached out and grabbed the spiky haired boy’s shoulder, already seeing all those familiar spikes... only for her to come eye to eye with a boy who looked a lot like Sora, but had black hair and yellow eyes. 

... Huh?

Kairi had to think back on all the Soras she had met. Roxas, Ventus probably? Wait. Ventus mentioned a boy, “Vanitas!” she yelled and tried to summon her weapon, but she was crushed by a sudden crowd getting off another ship and couldn’t quite reach the boy again.

Vanitas, meanwhile, was just holding a box and just looking... confused? Kairi was steadily losing track of what was happening. Wasn’t he a Seeker of Darkness or whatever? Here, he just looked like a confused, albeit grumpy, boy.

“Van! Hurry up with that cargo, boy!” a voice from inside the ship called. The boy looked away from Kairi and carried on with his task.

Kairi was washed out by the crowd and returned to the main part of the port, grateful to not have people pushing on her again. She was completely lost, too. Kairi resigned herself to a familiar bench -meaning not only did she make no progress on the keyhole, she was literally back where she started.

The little blue creature was back, pulling gently on her shoes as she remained seated. Eventually, it crawled back up beside the now softly weeping Kairi. Unsure of what to do, it laid a little pointy arm on her shoulder.

“I... I thought I was so close.” Kairi sobbed. She curled up into herself on the bench, letting herself flop onto her side. “I still don’t know what I’m doing.” the tears were falling harder and she had to work to breathe through all the crying-snot she’d worked up. “I’m so useless, I have to get kidnapped to figure out what’s happening to my friends.”

The little creature chittered and carefully moved to sit on Kairi’s shoulder, wiping away tears with its arm, trying not to hurt her. This thing really had no idea what to do. It was made of negative emotion, though Kairi seemed to have somehow soothed its... anger? No, it thought. I was made of loneliness.

It took some time to pull herself back together, but eventually, Kairi was in Save Sora Mode. She started to sit back up, and the creature managed to stay on her shoulder, moving the bulk of its weight into her hood and leaning over to watch out for her. It even headbutted Kairi’s cheek to reassure her.

“Thanks,” she said and gave it a pat on the head. After further consideration, she added, “Berry.”

It looked confused at the addition.

“I don’t know what your name is, so for now I’m just gonna call you Blueberry.” she poked the nose of the little creature. “Or Berry for short.”

Berry chirped happily, and settled deeper into her hood.

The cobblestone road stretched out before the two, and Kairi wondered what to do next. Vanitas didn’t attack her, and pulling out a weapon then was probably a decent way to end up... wherever they put people who break the law here go. Stupid World Order.

But it looked like Vanitas was working on the ship. So all she had to do was sneak aboard the ship, wait for a chance to interrogate Vanitas about Sora, and then beat him up with new clues to where Sora was. This was going great.

However, Kairi made note of the setting sun. That was going to have to happen soon, or she’d be out on the streets in the dark. As it stood, she was feeling pretty silly about having walked back and forth across these docks.

However, as she scanned the skyline, she saw the spiky black hair again. Dark tendrils of evil spiraled off of him, and people (and robots and aliens) all were quickly running away from what looked to be a massive brawl in the streets.

Kairi summoned her weapon, letting the weight of it steel her heart. “Where’s Sora?” she yelled.

Vanitas said nothing as dozens more creatures crawled out of the alleyways, things that looked like... Kairi looked at Blueberry, who was now hugging her neck tightly. Was it strangling her? Kairi raised her free hand to push it away, but stopped when she saw it was shaking in fear. Instead of pushing it away, she pushed it down into her hood and said, “Berry, stay down. It’s going to get dangerous.”

Berry stayed put, resting its weight between Kairi’s shoulder blades like it was watching her back.

Kairi pointed her Keyblade at Vanitas, “answer my question!”

Two more little blue creatures -Flood, Kairi dimly recalled Aqua saying once- jumped at her and Kairi managed to bat them away like flies. There was no time to hesitate, Kairi charged in, plowing through all the Flood and managing to swipe at Vanitas himself, who managed to block it just in time with his arms. Kairi pushed harder, and finally Vanitas had to focus on her. The flowers bit into his exposed skin and made him bleed.

“Where. Is. Sora.” Kairi asked again, pushing even harder.

Vanitas met her eyes with nothing but disdain and anger. He tried to do... something with his hands, but nothing happened. Kairi wondered why he hadn’t teleported or summoned his keyblade yet.

Berry moved inside her hood and Kairi sidestepped a larger blue Unversed. A... scrapper maybe? It slammed into Vanitas, knocking him to the ground. The scrapper was absorbed into Vanitas, causing yet more tendrils of darkness to come off of the boy who looked so much like Sora that it hurt Kairi a little to see that face in such intense pain. Berry crawled out of her hood, settling again on her shoulder, watching with... a worried look? Unversed were hard to read for emotions other than ‘attack the keyblade wielder’.

The rest of the Unversed seemed lost now that Vanitas wasn’t controlling them. They either ran off, or made a pitiful attempt at harming Kairi. Vanitas himself wasn't much better off, as he seemed to have gotten sick on the docks, barely able to stand up and say, “as if I’m going to tell you.”

So he knew. Kairi had no time to continue this further, and started to bring down her keyblade again, hard. However, she stopped dead when she saw Vanitas, the boy made purely of darkness and malice, flinch. 

“Why are you here?” Kairi asked. “You were destroyed.”

“Haha, wouldn’t you like to- ow!” he started to say before Kairi hit him in the head with the keyblade with enough force to hurt, but not do much other than bruise. “Fine. I don’t know either. I woke up here after the battle and...” he shook his head. “It's none of your business. I’ve got work in the morning, if you’re not going to kill me.” Vanitas pushed the keyblade away with her hands and put his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t you have a connection to Sora?” Kairi asked. “I... we need to find him.”

“Good luck with that,” Vanitas said, turning on his heel and walking away. “Not my problem.”

Kairi needed a bluff. “If he dies, then you vanish too, right? I mean, Vanitas was connected to Sora too, and you’re just Ventus’ twin, right?”

Vanitas came to a slow stop as the logic turned over in his head. “Why should I care what happens to that twerp. He’s not my ‘twin’ or whatever. Just somebody I have to form the X-Blade with. Or I did, before I ended up here.”

“And why are you here?” Kairi asked.

Vanitas’ face twisted in annoyance, and Kairi’s gut twisted, too. That face was Sora’s, but it made expressions that Sora would never make.

“I could say the same to you, Princess.” he said the word with enough venom to make her skin crawl. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere getting kidnapped?”

He kept getting further and further away, and Kairi couldn’t help but feel Vanitas probably held a clue to Sora or the next sleeping Keyhole.

“I want to join you!” she yelled, and Vanitas was so surprised he tripped over a loose rock.

Kairi jogged over to help him up, but he slapped her offered handaway, glancing pointedly at her still unsheathed keyblade. The glare was less effective considering he had thrown up only moments before, but Kairi dismissed her weapon regardless.

“Join me on what? A boring bout of sitting in the hold and waiting for the next port? I’m not doing anything other than my job.” he said it as though Kairi thought he was up to something darkness related.

“Well, I could put in a good word for you with the others,” Kairi offered, but when Vanitas began to protest again, “or I will join you, get a lead and we part and I forget I ever saw you.”

Vanitas rubbed his temples as though that would ease the annoyance he was feeling and Kairi smugly smiled at her victory. She had no no idea why Vanitas wanted to stay, but as long as she could keep an eye on him, it didn’t matter. He might look like Sora, but he was with Xehanort, regardless.

Berry popped their head out to look at Vanitas.

There was so much happening at once Vanitas didn’t have the mental processes to fully understand what he was seeing, so instead he shook his head and instead held back the next set of venomous words.

-  
Kairi decided that stowing away in the hold of a ship was less romantic than all the books her English teacher made her read. Even though it was a cool flying ship that had glittery sci-fi sails, she was stuck in a barrel on top of a bunch of space limes. Berry, on the other hand, was contentedly sleeping on her stomach, cramped as she was in the barrel. She nested a hand on it idly, staring up through the small cracks in the lid, where light still crept in.

Berry stirred, then resumed sleeping. For a creature formed of dark emotions, it was very...

One eye opened, lazily looking at Kairi. They must have noticed her worry, because it stretched, much like a cat, and headbutted her in the face a little too hard and a little too on the nose.

The pain made her jump and dislodge Berry from their resting spot on her stomach, sending them off into the limes.

Of course, Kairi knew all about Nightmares and Dream Eaters, but she had yet to run into any. She couldn’t help but remember Riku recounting his test, and having run into both right off the at. Maybe it was because she wasn’t worthy.

Her stomach interrupted her train of thought.

There was no way she was eating a raw lime, so it was time to raid the pantry -against the insistent orders of one Vanitas. The rule breaking made it all the more exciting. She was still careful to peer out and watch for any people still loading things onto the ship. When it was clear, Kairi crawled out into the hold proper.

The crates were stacked high and while she could identify the objects in some; produce, rope, more limes, she had a much harder time identifying others. Orbs and glowing crates, Kairi was careful to leave anything like that alone.

She caught a glimpse of the sky outside, with stars glittering despite the soft glow of the port. She couldn’t recognize a single constellation.

It was a strange emotion that settled in her chest. Slightly like fear, but a little like excitement, too.

She pulled some hardtack off a stray crate, the food having been forgotten at the end of the work rush. She remembers pestering some of the sailors to try the hardtack she’d read so much about in her stories. It was terrible. Rubbery and tasteless, as a child who really never had to go without, she spit it out immediately. Oh the sailors laughed, then offered some broth to dip it in.

It didn't taste better, but Kairi stubbornly finished it. She had asked for it, after all. And she didn’t like acting weak or letting others laugh at her.

As she chewed the present hardtack - and boy did she have to chew- she seriously considered if Vanitas was the same way. Maybe he was too stubborn to die, or maybe he was looking for something he was too stubborn to give up on.

“Egads, lad! What’d ya do ter ya arms?”

Vanitas looked at the open gashes from last night. He hadn’t done anything to treat them, why would he? “Fell.”

The old cyborg was not impressed with the poor lie. Vanitas only had a few interactions with him since... since Vanitas showed up here. However, the cyborg shook his head and ushered Vanitas to the infirmary, rinsing the cuts out after opening them up again.

Vanitas was faintly proud of how he didn’t flinch or anything during the process. No point in exposing any further weakness.

“Ya know lad, these look closer to knife cuts than road rash.” the cyborg said, looking knowingly at Vanitas.

That irritated Vanitas.. “It’s none of your business.” the girl from last night had that knowing look, too.

Well what did they know? He was darkness and monsters. Those monsters even obeyed his command! Sometimes. Most of the time, even. He was their master, after all.

Or... he was. Ever since that girl showed up they were... not more violent. No, they were more confused?

Regardless, to see that little Unversed clinging to that... Princess! Why? Unlike the others it didn't attack. Heck, it even seemed happy to hang out on her shoulder. He tried not to let the annoyance bleed out onto his face.

"Somethin' bothering ya, lad?"

Damn it. "Yeah. How I'm going to explain my sitting here while you play nursemaid and cost us both our jobs."

"Easy," the cyborg said. "Ya said ya fell, right? Can't load a ship wit bleedin' arms, right?" he winked conspiratorially. 

Vanitas rolled his eyes and pulled his arm free of the grip, the bandage hanging loose on it. He didn’t even bother to finish wrapping it before heading back out. Vanitas crossed the threshold before he heard the cyborg move and Vanitas turned on his heel to reflexively catch...

An orange.

“Don’t forget ta feed yer stowaway,” the cyborg said. “Though she might want a real job on the ship before we heard out. Tell ‘er the kitchen has an opening.”

Vanitas looked at the orange, then the cyborg, then back to the orange. Certainly it would be easier... but he couldn’t let this cyborg win so he glared and said, “stop assuming things, old man.”

The day passed quickly, and while some people asked about the bandages or tried to fix them -one person nearly was bitten when they tried to adjust them- Vanitas mainly grumbled and people stayed clear.

Good. No one would mess with him. No one could hold power over him ever again.

Not even that Princess of Light or whatever. Not even...

He considered the orange from earlier. She would be hungry, right? “Tch,” he hissed, pulling it out from his pocket. It looked a little crushed from work and moving around. “I just forgot to eat it,” he told himself.

People bumped into him from behind, startled by his sudden stop. They had been boarding the ship again to do final check on supplies and hadn’t been prepared for this child to pull out an orange from nowhere.

“Hurry up, ya layabout!”

Vanitas stared them straight in the eyes as he bit down into the mushy and bruised orange. He would sooner eat it as is -which was terrible the peel was tasteless and tough- and keep up appearances than deal with questions.

He was independent. 

He had a whole orange peel in his mouth, but he proved his point. Probably.

The crew members went around him and didn’t really have much else to say. As soon as they were clear, Vanitas spit the peel out over the dock, surprised that he had held his ground as long as he did. Still, the incident did remind him...

-  
Vanitas’ small tray of food scavenged from leftovers and -he wasn’t going to tell the princess- the garbage wasn’t as full as he’d preferred it, but he wasn’t giving up his own food.

She could deal with finding meals on her own when she had the job in the kitchen, whatever. Plus, she’d be out of his sight there, too. He almost smiled... when his tray was sliced cleanly in half by a flowery keyblade wielded by a pink blur.

The princess swung the weapon up and under his chin, and Vanitas was just barely clear in time. He swore that the key was so close it would have given him a haircut.

Finally, the princess revealed her reason for attacking, the small blue unversed over her shoulder glaring accusingly as she said, “so why aren’t you using your keyblade?”


End file.
